MELBOURNE -- Garbine Muguruza stormed back into the Grand Slam big time with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to reach her first Australian Open semi-final on Wednesday.

FALLING short in its quest to make it to the main draw of AFC Champions League (ACL) 2020, top local club Ceres-Negros FC now turns its focus to the AFC Cup which begins next month.

THE Badminton Asia Manila Team Championships 2020 happening in the country next month took further form on Wednesday with the official draw of the groupings.

MIGHTY SPORTS Philippines completed a sweep of its group assignment at the 31^st Dubai International Basketball Tournament after defeating Beirut Sports Club, 91-77, early Wednesday morning, time here in Manila.

This was the final game of the world championship match (not counting tie-breaks) of Ju Wenjun and Aleksandra Goryachkina. Ju was a point ahead and Goryachkina had to win at all costs. What is she to do?

Roger Federer was ready to lose. He didn’t want to; the 20-time major champion headed into the Australian Open fully expecting to compete for yet another title. In fact, he put his trademark competitiveness on display against 47^th-ranked John Millman in the third round, surviving a tough match that went the distance and included two tiebreakers, one in the final set. Unfortunately, he found his game so hampered by a groin pull that he wound up producing unforced error after unforced error in the quarterfinal round the other day. Down two sets to one and facing imminent defeat in the fourth against unseeded Tennys Sandgren, he contemplated his immediate future and figured he was meant for an early exit. But still he soldiered on.

GROWING up Eduard Folayang never thought that he would build a successful career doing martial arts, and to this day he is just amazed at how things have turned out for him in the path he has chosen.

MELBOURNE -- Sofia Kenin kept her game neat and tidy to see off big-hitting Tunisian Ons Jabeur 6-4, 6-4 at the Australian Open on Tuesday and reach her first Grand Slam semifinal.

THE run of Ceres-Negros FC at the AFC Champions League ended on Tuesday night after losing to FC Tokyo, 2-0, in their qualification playoff match in Japan.

ANTIPOLO CITY -- Late great Kobe Bryant has definitely influenced a generation of Filipino basketball players.

MIGHTY Sports Philippines stayed unscathed at the 31^st Dubai International Basketball Tournament after racing to their third straight win with an 84-66 rout of Es Rades Tunisia early Tuesday morning (Manila time).

CALABASAS, CALIF. -- Overcast skies and fog reported at the scene of the helicopter wreck that killed Los Angeles basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others figured prominently on Monday in the first full day of federal aviation experts’ crash investigation.